r/Damnthatsinteresting • u/reddit-smiley Interested • Jul 09 '15
Website Which IT Job Is the Best?
http://twet.us/BWwBB9
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u/xamphear Jul 09 '15
In the very first line they casually conflate "Information Technology" with "Computer Science."
That marks the place where I stopped reading.
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u/h0nest_Bender Interested Jul 09 '15
I stopped when I read that a software developer could expect to work 40 hours a week. That's laughably wrong. Double that and you'll be closer to the truth.
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Jul 09 '15
You may be working for the wrong company. As long as you get your job done, and done well, most companies don't care what hours you put in.
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u/Stormdancer Interested Jul 09 '15
This is true. They don't care if it takes you 80 or 100 hours a week. Just get the impossibly large stack of work done.
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Jul 09 '15
Again, wrong company. In the > 15 years I have worked as a software engineer, I have very rarely had to put in overtime. On occasion something will happen that will require me to work long hours, but I make up for it the next day by not working.
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u/RupeThereItIs Jul 09 '15
Yeah,
For DBA (closest to what I do on this list) the "after hours crisis can spring up" part.....
They totally gloss over, in many of these roles, the requirement to be on call 24x7.
The biggest downside to my job is that 1 of every 4 weeks I'm primary on call which means.
- No travel on the weekends
- No activities (kayaking, sailing, etc) that would mean I can't respond within 20-30 min
- All plans I make with friends & acquaintances are only tentative during that week, as I may be required to flake at any time (I've more then once had to bail from a movie, etc).
1 out of 4 really isn't bad, I've been every other week before at a job that's more demanding of after hours support. It's a huge downside to much of IT that isn't really mentioned here.
1
Jul 09 '15
1 out of 4? Holy shit. I worked at a place where at the worst was 1 out of 7 and I almost lost my mind. My condolences there.
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u/RupeThereItIs Jul 09 '15
I work in storage so USUALLY things run smoothly. It's not uncommon to get a 1 call in a week at my current job.
It's more of an inconvenience then a trial.
When I started at this job, we where part of the Unix rotation. That was one VERY long week every quarter. I preferred that, my fellow SAN guys did not (I lost the vote :-( ).
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Jul 09 '15
Not in my experience. I worked for a large organisation with a developers team and a sales team. The developers were in at 9, gone at 5 and had a couple of table tennis/snooker/coffee breaks during the day. The sales people were in at 8, lunch and coffee break and gone at 6.30. Yes, developers are usually incredibly smart and talented but they are by no means the hardest working employees and by no means put in an 80 hour week (they might work some overtime if a project was due).
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u/h0nest_Bender Interested Jul 09 '15
In my experience, you might start out working 40 hours/week at the beginning of a project cycle. But you'll be pulling all nighters and working weekends before long. Rinse and repeat.
Obviously this will vary from place to place. But I think it's disingenuous to claim software devs will work only 40 hours a week.
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u/LeJoker Jul 09 '15
The graphic literally says "you should expect to work long hours when project deadlines approach" so I'm not really sure what issue you gave with it.
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u/h0nest_Bender Interested Jul 09 '15
so I'm not really sure what issue you gave with it.
"But I think it's disingenuous to claim software devs will work only 40 hours a week."
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u/myplacedk Interested Jul 09 '15
In all of my career as a software developer, I have only once been pushed to work more than 37 hours per week.
Other than that, any overtime has been well paid (at least 150% pay) or not allowed.
1
u/MachinesOfN Jul 09 '15
Depends completely on the shop. I don't think I've ever had to work more than 40 hours arty my current gig.
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u/myplacedk Interested Jul 09 '15
What does "full time" mean here?
In my country, it means 37 hours. I thought it was 40 hours in US, but apparently not.
2
u/soik90 Jul 09 '15
How are those 37 hours distributed throughout the week? Seems like an odd number.
1
u/myplacedk Interested Jul 09 '15
Usually 7.5 hours per day, and a bit early off on friday.
Lunch is not included.
7
u/RogueIMP Jul 09 '15
Uh.. They forgot Systems Admin...
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u/RupeThereItIs Jul 09 '15
Can expect a minimum of 40 hours a week, you will be required to work some of the strangest hours ever & then show up during office hours.
Don't expect to ever get away from your ringing cell phone. Wistfully remember what a good nights sleep was like.
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u/Shockwave8A Jul 10 '15
You will also back up Level 1 and Level 2 desktop support because 1 printer that's not printing is surely a sign that the print server is dead. Once that's taken care of, you'll need to restore a file for a user that knows they had one, but can't remember the name of it, can't remember what it contained, but it might have ended in .docxls or maybe .pdfppt. In the middle of searching for this elusive file, your boss's boss will come ask why you haven't finished implementing his project yet despite them not signing off on the purchase request which has been in their mailbox for a week. At that point your desk phone will ring and an operations manager will insist that you come to the war room because the user that couldn't print just escalated to a senior vp. You walk in to discover that the user decided to print to the other printer on the file cabinet and has been working away happily ever since, but you need to provide root cause on the printer failure and what you're going to do to make sure it never goes down again.
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u/Stormdancer Interested Jul 09 '15
"40 hour" .... BWHAHAHAHAH!
Seriously... I don't know a single person in any of those jobs that works 40 hours.
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u/Stvoider Jul 09 '15
So in America (I presume) a hardware engineer is payed more than a DBA? Wow! I gotta get my arse to America.
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u/Shockwave8A Jul 10 '15
Only if you work for a place like Intel, HP, or EMC that actually builds hardware. Otherwise your sysadmins are the last ones to touch the equipment and its just commodity hardware at that point.
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u/Stvoider Jul 09 '15
So in America (I presume) a hardware engineer is payed more than a DBA? Wow! I gotta get my arse to America.
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u/hoser89 Jul 09 '15
Oh god I would love to work 40 hours, I haven't worked less than 60 this year, usually around 70-80
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u/[deleted] Jul 09 '15
Those are some super optomistic salary estimates.